LIFE IS NOT CANCELLED BUT POSTPONED
©Stephen Kersch
Things are changing fast with the on-going COVID-19 pandemic. While the The New York Times, Die Zeit, El País and all other media outlets continue to offer a wealth of information, this is my personal take on the situation. I am not a doctor, and the following post is not medical advice. It is, however, a summary of what I have researched, as well as I am sharing my thoughts on the current crisis that we are going through. Also, I would like to share my condolences with all the people that have been directly effected by this tragic event, as well as send my strength to those that are fighting to cure this pandemic. We are in this together. If you do not have the time to read this post, the key takeaway from this piece of writing is to isolate yourself as good as you can, stay at home and follow further notice by authorities and governments.
Today, I was supposed to start The Speed Project, running 550 kilometers from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. I have been training relentlessly for the past five months and all of a sudden my dreams have been shattered! Last Thursday, we have received the video message declaring that The Speed Project has been cancelled and will be postponed to a new date. I was devastated, but I must admit that like so many of us, little did I know at that time, what was awaiting us. Things can change fast! A couple of hours later, it turned out that I was no longer able to enter the United States, as President Trump had put a travel ban in place for all European countries. More and more races are being canceled all over the world, including the Boston Marathon and the London Marathon. Football games have been called off, museums have shut their doors, and James Blunt played in front of empty ranks in the Hamburger Elbphilarmonie live-streaming the concert across the globe. Your holiday flights have been cancelled and the Olympic Games are under investigation to be postponed.
While it sounds selfish, you are allowed to feel your feelings, even if you know your event is being canceled for the greater good and you know there are more serious things going on right now. But you are still a human being and you can feel multiple things at the same time. It is okay to be upset. Give yourself a good five to ten minutes, where you are allowed to panic, scream and cry. You were this close to being at the starting line, or wrapping up an important project. Whatever it was, you were comfortable on your set path and now your plans are derailed.
Nevertheless this does not excuse disrespectful behavior that we see starting to arise, whether it be sharing your disappoint on social media or acting like an idiot in the supermarket, when buying 20 packs of toilet paper. Do not tweet in all caps on Twitter, nor post nasty comments on Instagram. Do not take out your frustration on people who are, just as upset, and probably equally scared, as you are about the current situation. There are always two sides to a coin. Take a step back and consider looking at a situation from a different perspective and try to see things in relative terms. Not running through the desert, but working from my table at home, made me reflect about the situation and looking at the other side of the coin.
COVID-19
SARS-CoV-2 is a severe acute respiratory syndrome, formerly known as 2019-nCoV. SARS-CoV2 is the virus, and COVID-19 is the disease which that virus spreads. People also refer to the disease as “coronavirus”. Coronaviruses (CoV) are a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV). COVID-19 is a unique virus. It is a called novel coronavirus because it is a new disease for humans. The World Health Organization (“WHO”) estimates a global death rate of 3.4% of those who are infected. While many people around the world may have built up immunity to various flu strains over time, the newness of COVID-19 means no one had immunity to it when it first broke out. There is also no established treatment for COVID-19, which means that there is presently no way to cure this disease.
The fast spread of this virus has led to heavy amounts of disinformation, conspiracy theories and fake news. Some people suggested that this is “just like the flu.” It is not like the flu, because we know the flu. Also, it is not like the last recession because there is no company to blame and bail out. The reason why this disease and its effects are so much more distressing is because of the uncertainty. COVID-19 is a pandemic compounded by crashing a globalized economy and eliminating social connectivity. I do not need to repeat the science and statistics. We have all seen, heard and analyzed the same graphs of flattened curves. The bottom line is that COVID-19 is a real threat. Much of the population will get sick from this virus and a percentage of those people will die.
While the majority of infections will be mild, those mildly infected people can and will transmit this highly contagious disease to others. It is crucial that we keep the numbers low. Studies are showing that even if you are fully asymptomatic, you can still spread this virus as a vector. Joshua Weitz, a professor at Georgia Tech, co-authored a paper about the asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19, where he underlines the importance to practice social distancing.
FLATTEN THE CURVE
We have no natural immunity against a novel virus, which means that there is no ceiling on the amount of people who can get infected. A vaccine is at least a few months away. It is uncertain at this point whether any antiviral drugs will work or whether rising temperatures outside will slow the disease down. Panic is not useful, but changing nothing in life does not help either. It is actually outright dangerous right now. It is about being informed, prepared, and willing to think about society as a whole. For now, the best we know how to combat COVID-19 is washing our hands and social distancing, a word that none of us really ever heard about until a week ago.
COVID-19 is a pandemic now and cases are doubling every day. While research labs and scientists around the world are racing to find a vaccine that works, as of today the only ways to address the outbreak are mitigation and attempting to slow down the spread. We can no longer eliminate COVID-19, but we can reduce its impact. Some countries have been exemplary at this and they have been able to contain it, but most countries lacked this expertise and have been unable to control the spread, therefore forcing them to take mitigating actions. They need to make this virus as inoffensive as possible. If we reduce the infections, our healthcare system will be able to handle cases much better, driving the fatality rate down. The more we postpone cases, the better the healthcare system can function, and the higher the share of the population that will be vaccinated before it gets infected. We do not want to enter a stage, where a healthcare system is over capacity and doctors will need to decide who receives care, whether the patient suffers from COVID-19 or another medical condition, effectively deciding on life or death. So, while staying home, from an individual risk perspective, seems unnecessary and an overreaction, from a systemic risk perspective, it is the only prudent thing to do. The more people go out, the faster this virus spreads, the more hospitals get flooded, and the more people die unnecessarily.
There is an interesting info graphic prepared by the Washingon Post explaining this so-called exponential curve that has experts worried. If the number of cases were to continue to double every three days, there would be about a hundred million cases in the United States by May. That is math, not prophecy. The spread can be slowed if people practice social distancing by avoiding public spaces and limiting their movement in public. The current scientific consensus is that this virus can be spread within two meters (six feet) if somebody coughs. Otherwise, the droplets fall to the ground and do not infect you. Furthermore, infection can also be passed on through surfaces, as the virus survives for up to nine days on different surfaces such as metal, ceramics and plastics. That means things like doorknobs, tables, or elevator buttons can be terrible infection vectors.
Containment is making sure all the cases are identified, controlled, and isolated, which is what Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan or Taiwan have been doing well. They very quickly limit people coming in, identify the sick, immediately isolate them, use heavy protective gear to protect their health workers, track all their contacts, quarantine them. This works well when you are prepared and you do it early on, and do not need to grind your economy to a halt to make it happen, which is unlike what has occurred in European countries and the United States. European countries, such as Italy, Austria or Germany, missed to contain the virus early, thus they now require heavy social distancing to mitigate the continuous spreading of COVID-19. People need to stop sharing public spaces, in order to drop the transmission rate from two to three that the virus follows, to below 1, so that it can be controlled. These measures require closing companies, shops, public transport, schools, as well as enforcing lock-downs. This is what Wuhan had to do and Italy was forced to put in place as the first European nation.
THIS IS EVERYONE’S DUTY
The facts already show the impact COVID-19 has had on our ecosystem, yet it is apparently not near widespread enough that we have seen the worst of it. The situation across Europe and in countries like the United States is about to get worse very fast. The only thing we can control is the speed of the spread, which is why the next two months are critical. “We are still within the window of opportunity of slowing the virus down. We can no longer stop it, but we can slow it down. A lot,” says Dr. Christoforos Anagnostopoulos, an Honorary Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London.
Delaying COVID-19 has become a public service to be conducted by every individual. You can achieve this through the following suggestions on personal hygiene and social distancing by Dr. Anagnostopoulos:
Wash your hands thoroughly. As if you've just chopped chilli peppers and you're about to remove your contact lenses. Use liquid soap or alcohol-based solution. Do it 10 times a day.
Treat every surface as possibly infected, and your phone as a Petri dish. If possible, keep it somewhere safe with your keys and wallet and do not use it indoors, or near your bed.
By default, cancel everything. Reduce all non-essential travel, all non-essential social interaction. Spend time with your kids indoors. Work from home if you can. Or be outdoors, keeping at least six feet between your family and other people.
Do not shake hands. Avoid meetings in closed spaces if you can.
Keep working, if you can. Sustain your economic contribution both demand-side and supply-side as much as you can, without exposing yourself physically.
There is little and contested evidence that masks help a healthy individual, but it is certain they help when used by medical professionals, and when worn by people that are ill. Leave masks for those that need them.
The elderly are particularly at risk, which is not common across all viruses. The best thing you can do for your elderly neighbours and relatives is to help them stay indoors (shop for them), but avoid seeing them in person if you can.
WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER
We are embarking on this journey together. To have friends and family, community, and billions of people around the world sharing this fear, makes it feel lighter. It is uncertain how long these exceptional measures will last, although it is probable that they will be extended to a number of weeks or month, never mind the lasting COVID-19 will have on our economy. Yet, in a World that has been built to enable working remotely, created a love for the gig economy and offers ways to communicate through a variety of digital platforms, all these inventions really pay of now. Thanks to the emergence of technology, we have tools at hand to host virtual meetings, access all necessary documents through the cloud and continue with the delivery of our operations. While we embrace the power of technology, we also realize how much we appreciate the power of a community or the idea of sharing a glass of wine together, we understand the importance of physical interaction and the necessary emotions of experiencing a product inside a retail store, as well as do not want to miss sharing a table with friends in a restaurant, instead of getting the meal delivered to your doorstep.
We are about to live through some very exceptional weeks, in which our patience, our generosity and commitment as global citizens, our responsibility and our ability to overcome great challenges will be put to the test. From this experience we shall emerge stronger, more entrepreneurial, as well as being better individuals and better professionals. If you look throughout history, the biggest and most necessary changes typically come in the wake of crises, much like our most important personal changes often come in the wake of our traumas. There is always growth in pain. And there is always opportunity for creation in destruction. There are always two sides to the coin.
Unfortunately, many of us will suffer losses on the work front, but this can also be an opportunity to consider our dreams, careers and workplaces differently. Bobby Kim (aka. Bobby Hundreds) has put it nicely in his post: “This is going to reset a lot of paradigms, so I hope that it can be for the better. Perhaps we will all, together, finally prioritize universal healthcare. Perhaps we will value strong national leadership. Maybe some of our divides will not seem as far apart when we are faced with a common enemy. A ringing of solidarity in the background of universal fear and concern as we are all shouldering that fear together. Also, while the fear is connected to the virus, it is also a lot about the uncertainty. Nature and the universe were never in our control, and clearly not as predictable as we fooled ourselves into believing.”
As dreams, events and plans are being cancelled, we shall remain patient and be mindful in our actions. We are living in a world, where people have been losing sight of the process and the journey towards a goal, instead they are seeking its instant fulfillment and the gratification of such. Delayed gratification, which is common in sports, contrasting the instant satisfaction that we so often seek in our daily lives. While we like to meet our friends today or going to the gym, we must cancel these actions immediately. We need to remain calm, persistent and enduring, in order to accomplish our wished outcome that is greater than ourselves, controlling the spread of COVID-19. Remember that feeling when you have been training for a marathon, or studying for your language test, it is a long road, but once you have successfully accomplished your goal, glory tastes good, and so will that espresso or beer, once we will win this battle against this pandemic altogether.
I named this post “not cancelled but postponed” in light of the cancellation of The Speed Project. While talking of sports, defeat is another common denominator that sports teaches us. You can make mistakes and you can lose, but then you reflect and react. Athletes and teams are analyzing what they have done wrong, trying to improve and not to do the same mistake again. This shall equally be part of your journey to become better as individuals, as a team, and as society as a whole. As we are venturing through these dark times and fighting together against the impact of this tragic virus, we must ask ourselves what comes next? What must we change? What will our learning be from COVID-19? How do we move forward?
What happened after the bush fires in Australia? What about the locus crisis in Kenya at the moment? And, how about the newly upcoming refugee crisis at the Greek boarder? What happened with that tsunami in Thailand a few years ago? And, how about the tragic avalanche that hit Galtür in Austria in 1999? What happens to the melting ice in the Arctic and rising plastic pollution in our oceans?
Would you go off-piste skiing if there is a severe risk of an avalanche? Would you go surfing if entering the sea is prohibited due to strong currents? While you not only risk your life, you risk the life of those that might need to rescue you. This is a micro example. COVID-19 is a macro case that is impacting every single one of us. Would you sit in a café knowing that the person next to you carries a highly contagious and lethal virus that can kill someone, or vice versa, you may even carry the virus, potentially causing the death of an innocent soul?
It is not about causing panic, but about caring about the people around us and the planet we call home. We have to accept that we are smaller than the universe. We shall appreciate the beauty of our world and not challenge Mother Nature. We need to help one another, instead of fight against each other.
COVID-19 shall yet be another alert to us all. While we are tight up in our daily lives, the time in solitude shall remind us not forget to look to our sides, take time to reflect and find balance. Speak to friends and family through the web, pursue your work duties remotely, support the people in need around you, as well as help the economy as much as you can.
So, remain patient and do what you can to protect humanity. COVID-19 is spreading through our social networks, through our countries, our towns, our workplaces, our families. A single person’s behavior can cause ripple effects that touch faraway people. COVID-19 can kill. Stay at home and cancel all unnecessary personal undertakings. We are in this together. Life is not cancelled, but postponed. The journey continues.